Dafna Talmor

Artista, MIA Fair 2023 @ TOBE Gallery

Dafna Talmor, Constructed Landscapes II. Untitled (HA-1212-1, 2014

Courtesy: TOBE Gallery

Stampa cromogenica fatta a mano, collage da 2 negativi
Handmade chromogenic print from 2 collaged negatives
Dimensioni / Size: 76 x 103 cm
Edizione / Edition: 1/5 + 1AP
Prezzo / Price: 4380 €

An investigation into representations of landscape, Constructed Landscapes is a project I’ve been developing for over ten years; Consisting of three sub-series, the work stemmed from my personal archive of photographs initially shot as mere keepsakes across different locations that include Venezuela, Israel, the US and the UK. Produced by collaging medium format colour negatives, the process relies on experimentation in the colour darkroom.
Transformed through the act of slicing and splicing, the resulting images are staged landscapes, a conflation combining the ‘real’ and the imaginary. Through this work, specific places initially loaded with personal meaning and political connotations, are reconfigured into a space of greater universality. Blurring place, memory and time-defying specificity and referring to the transient - the work alludes to idealised and utopian spaces.
In Constructed Landscapes, condensing multiple time frames by collaging negatives to construct an image transfers the notion of the ‘decisive moment’ from the photographic act to the act of assembling and printing in the darkroom. In turn, fragments of varying source images collide and collude to create an illusory landscape; gaps and voids where negatives fail to meet or overlap mimic (and form new) elements of landscape, disrupting composition and distorting perspective.
In dialogue with the history of photography, Constructed Landscapes references Pictorialist processes of combination printing as well as Modernist experiments with the materiality of film. Whilst distinctly holding historical references, the work engages with contemporary discourse on manipulation and the analogue/digital divide. Beyond photographs, the work has expanded to include site-specific vinyl wallpapers, spatial interventions, photograms, studies and publications.

Dafna Talmor

Regno Unito @ United Kingdom
https://www.tobegallery.hu/tobe-gallery-artists/dafna-talmor

Dafna Talmor (b. 1974, Tel Aviv) is a London-based artist and lecturer whose practice encompasses photography, spatial interventions, curation and collaborations. Her photographs are included in public collections such as the National Trust, Victoria and Albert Museum, Deutsche Bank, and Hiscox and in private collections internationally. Talmor's work is included in Look at This If You Love Great Photography by Gemma Padley (Ivy Press 2021), Post-Photography: The Artist with a Camera by Robert Shore (Laurence King Publishing 2014) and Alternative Photographic Processes: Crafting Handmade Images by Brady Wilks (Focal Press 2015) and has been featured in publications such as Architectural Review, The Guardian, Paper Journal, c4 journal, American Suburb X, 1000 Words, Elephant Magazine, Arena, Camera Austria, ArtReview, IMA, BJP, Hotshoe, GUP, Photomonitor, Artra and BLOW. Her first monograph - Constructed Landscapes - published by Fw:Books in October 2020 - was longlisted for the 2021 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award and she was recently awarded a Royal Photographic Society Honorary Fellowship (2022).
Talmor was a finalist of the BNL BNP Paribas Group Award 2019, shortlisted for the MACK First Book Award 2018 and the Unseen Dummy Award 2018, was the recipient of a Breathing SPACE Bursary (2016), Arts Council England Grants for the Arts Awards (2017, 2014 & 2013), the Photofusion Select Bursary Award (2013), selected as a series finalist for the Renaissance Photography Prize 2013, IV Daniela Chappard Biennale Photography Award (2007) and nominated for the Paul Hamlyn Artist Award (2005). In March 2014, a collaborative initiative she co-founded with Minna Kantonen and Emma Wieslander, On Landscape Project, presented an Arts Council funded exhibition and programme of events On Landscape #1, at Yinka Shonibare's Guest Projects (London) followed by On Landscape #2 at Matèria Gallery (Rome 2015) and On Landscape #3 at Lower Hewood Farm (Dorset, UK 2016).
Alongside her practice, Talmor works as an Associate Lecturer. Her most recent posts were at Camberwell College of Arts on the Foundation Course and since 2008, leading the annual Fine Art Summer School at Goldsmiths, University of London. She also teaches on a freelance basis across institutions nationally and internationally, doing lectures and workshops across different contexts that have included Unseen Amsterdam, Tate Modern, The Photographers' Gallery, Photofusion, schools and universities.